The EU Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt took to the stage at Lib Dem conference this evening to claim the EU is “acting too little” and needs to become an empire, to rapturous applause. At least he’s being more honest than previous Lib Dem speakers…

After a weekend of speculation, Sam Gyimah – former Tory MP for East Surrey before losing the whip 2 weeks ago – has been unveiled as the latest defector to the Lib Dems. Read Gyimah’s explanation of his decision here.

As one Twitter user points out, with Sam’s defection that brings the average Lib Dem MP majority is negative 6,800. Just to squeeze out any remaining air of democracy from the party’s reputation…

This week, old footage has re-emerged of the 2001 Ipswich By-election. Not usually where Guido would expect to find the most riveting content…

This, however, was a by-election with a twist. When the result was announced the new MP was welcomed to the stage with a bizarre laser rave show, put on by the local council, which concluded with sparklers and confetti. The elderly returning officer took the whole thing in her stride…

Guido hears from a reliable source, who has previously provided accurate information on similar defections, that the Liberal Democrats are to announce former-Tory, former-Tigger, former-Change UK, former-Independent who promised to respect the referendum and deliver Brexit, Heidi Allen, will be joining their growing ranks at their party conference. Not a big jump for her after campaigning for the Lib Dems in July..,

From 9am -12pm next Wednesday the European Parliament will hold a big debate on the Brexit process. Curiously, the largest party in the Parliament has been allocated just one minute of the three hours of speaking time, despite making up 4% of all MEPs, and the debate being about the literal namesake of their party. Guido doubts it will be worth watching this 99.5% Remoaning winge-a-thon…

The Metropolitan Police have today announced there will be no further action against the Leave.EU campaign. The police said that there is insufficient evidence to justify any further criminal investigation. Campaign founder Arron Banks has demanded a public inquiry into Remainer MPs’ abuse of public office in response…

Read Banks’ statement in full here…

“We have been informed by the Metropolitan Police that they will be taking no action as a result of the investigation referred by the Electoral commission into the Leave.eu campaign and Ms Liz Bilney.

The have concluded that the leave.eu campaign did not break the law during the 2016 referendum.

The disgraceful political collusion between the Electoral Commission & the Damian Collins “Remain biased” DCMS committee and a number of leading Remain MPs, demonstrate a serious abuse of public office and we will be demanding a full public inquiry investigation into their actions.

We will be writing to the Prime Minster today demanding a public enquiry into the actions of the Electoral commission.

I am today calling for the resignation of Damian Collins and the CEO of Electoral commission as a result of today’s news.

The Electoral Commission have serious questions to answer about political bias and whether it is fit for purpose as a regulator.

The management board is overseen by third-rate politicos and people who have shown clear political bias. The Chairman himself described Brexit as a “ collection of Eurosceptic nonsense” and one of the EC board called for a second referendum!

The investigation has taken a huge personal toll on Liz Bilney, her family and the harassment and lies perpetrated by anti-Brexit MPs is disgraceful. MP’s like Stephen Kinnock & Ian Lavery should apologise to Liz and the 1.5 million supporters of Leave.EU they tried to smear.

During the last 2 years, the Metropolitan Police have been professional and thorough. They spent many hours investigating our case and they should be commended for doing a difficult job in a difficult political climate. They remained impartial and operated with complete integrity.

We would like to thank the Metropolitan Police Commissioner for giving her officers her full support at all times.

Arron Banks”

Met Police Statement:

On 5 August 2019 the MPS submitted a file to the CPS for Early Investigative Advice in relation to the Leave.EU investigation and this advice has now been received.

It is clear that whilst some technical breaches of electoral law were committed by Leave.EU in respect of the spending return submitted for their campaign, there is insufficient evidence to justify any further criminal investigation.

Commander Alex Murray, of Central Specialist Crime, said: “It was right to investigate the allegation, however following detailed enquiries it became apparent that the nature of potential breaches of the regulations, the criminal standard of proof required in court and the actions taken by Leave.EU to adhere to the regulations, mean that it is now appropriate to take no further action.”

Leave.EU’s responsible person has been has been told that they will face no further police action.

The full details of the technical breaches are fully detailed in the Electoral Commission report into the spending return dated 28 May 2018. This should be read in conjunction with the County Court Judgment between Leave.EU Group Ltd and the Electoral Commission of 21 March 2019.

The investigation into the spending returns of Vote Leave and BeLeave remains ongoing.

At the Prime Minister’s devolution speech today in Rotherham, one heckler hit out at Boris for his decision to bring forward a new Queen’s Speech after the longest parliament in hundreds of years. Brave to try a pro-Remain pro-Westminster heckle at a devolution event in 67.9% Leave Rotherham…

Yesterday’s pro-Brexit ruling in Northern Ireland thoroughly dismissed a Remainer case attempting to make No Deal illegal – by arguing it would damage the Northern Ireland peace process. In his judgement Lord Justice McCloskey thoroughly slapped down the spurious arguments that the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement hinges on membership of the European Union, or even regulatory alignment with it…

“Neither NIA 1998 nor the international treaty scheduled to the Belfast Agreement (or, for that matter, the Agreement itself) has the effect in law of requiring the continued membership of the EU on the part of the UK.

The Supreme Court was alert to this in Miller: see [129]. Furthermore, none of the sources mentioned subjects the EU 27 to conclude an Article 50 Withdrawal Agreement in any particular terms.”

“Once again, neither the Belfast Agreement nor this suite of provisions was predicated on the basis that UK membership of the EU would continue forever. Neither of them can be construed as requiring a customs Union or continued regulatory alignment. More fundamentally, there is no sufficient evidential foundation for the incompatibility asserted. There is no suggestion that the incompatibility has already materialised”

This expert ruling will come as sad news to some of Guido’s Remoaner friends, who have repeatedly, erroneously, argued that it does:

It is impossible for anyone who understands the Good Friday Agreement to believe that Northern Ireland can leave the Customs Union without breaking the treaty. Hoey is not the only one daft or deluded enough to miss this point. But this? This is a whole new level of batshittery. https://t.co/4TFQQzdnM4

The Good Friday Agreement is guaranteed by the EU. Without the EU and the four freedoms, without the Uk and Ireland both being in the EU, it wouldn’t have been possible. Hence why the GFA and peace are threatened by Brexit.

Ireland & UK signed the Good Friday Agreement explicitly as EU members. 3,600 deaths preceded it. If there was an easy solution they’d have found it at 36 deaths.
WE chose to undermine the agreement with no solution.
We should be ASHAMED that it’s not US insisting on the backstop

Ten independent councillors elected to Hartlepool Council in May – turfing out the governing Labour Party in the process – have defected en masse to the Brexit Party, meaning the party now controls its first council in coalition with the Tories. At least the 70% of Hartlepool residents who voted for Brexit can rely on their council backing them, unlike Remain MP Mike Hill…

The new council composition therefore is:

10 Brexit Party

10 Labour

4 Socialist Labour

3 Conservatives

3 Putting Seaton First

2 Independents

1 For Britain

The defecting 10 met with the Brexit Party at Nigel Farage’s rally in Sedgefield two days ago, where they informed Richard Tice of their decision. Guido suspects this will be far from the last council taken over by the Brexit Party if we don’t leave on the 31st…

John Bercow delivered a highly politically charged speech at last night’s Bingham Lecture, particularly hitting out at Brexiteers, and ignoring his own flagrant disregard for the constitution. The supposedly impartial speaker took the opportunity to declare that he supports written constitution, and even ad-libbed from his script to actually compare the Prime Minister to a knife-wielding street gang member. A new Speaker can’t come soon enough…

The Remaniacs Podcast has reacted with fury after discovering the Government’s ‘prepare for Brexit’ ads are being broadcast in front of the latest episode.

Dear listeners, if you’re getting #GetReadyForBrexitAdBollocks before your podcast, please understand that a] We don’t get to choose the automated pre-rolls, and b] We will be putting this slice of Gove’s £100m to a use that will please one and all. Watch this space.

A party’s conference is their opportunity to allow members to debate policy, market their party to donors, and show the public the best of what their party has to offer. The Labour party are ensuring they tick this last box this year with a number of very questionable fringe events this year, featuring Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson.

Labour conference-goers can also look forward to a “Labour Against the Witchhunt” meeting with Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker. The problem for Labour is surely within their party these views are no longer fringe…

The Euro has fallen sharply against the pound as a result of a sweeping host of measures from the European Central Bank aimed at stimulating the ailing Eurozone economy. The bank today announced a 10 bps rate cut, aggressive forward guidance, and open ended quantitative easing at €20 billion every month. With panicky measures like this, the last thing the Eurozone needs now is a No Deal Brexit…

Ben Lofthouse, Fund Manager of Henderson International Income Trust, outlines some of the positive income trends from around the world, which the Trust has benefited from; and he explains how the Trust is impacted by the ongoing trade war. See more here.

This is a sponsored post by Janus Henderson Investors. These are the views of the author at the time of publication and may differ from the views of other individuals/teams at Janus Henderson Investors. Any securities, funds, sectors and indices mentioned within this article do not constitute or form part of any offer or solicitation to buy or sell them.

Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The value of an investment and the income from it can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the amount originally invested. The information in this article does not qualify as an investment recommendation. For promotional purposes.

In the wilder corners of Twitter, the remainiacs have a meta-conspiracy theory they call “Brexit Disaster Capitalism”, it has a number of components and is based on some far-fetched premises;

Brexit will be a disaster and lead to economic collapse.

Prominent rich Brexiteers know this, they intend to profit from it by selling short stocks high to buy back low after the disaster.

City tycoons and hedge fund managers financed the Brexit campaign to bring about the collapse from which they will profit massively whilst the rest of us suffer.

The fact that Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, has an interest in a fund management firm is cited as proof. The latest incarnation and attempt to shore up the theory is based on the publicly-disclosed short interests of various fund managers who have given money to the Tories, Vote Leave or Boris Johnson’s campaigns. Carole Cadwalladr tweeted last night that they have aggregate short positions of some £4,563,350,000. Four and a half billion quid of shorts by Brexit-backing fund managers sounds like a huge amount. Except it isn’t in relative terms.

The UK stock market is capitalised at over £4 trillion, so that aggregate short position is equivalent to something like a tenth of 1% of the market. Nothing unusual. Long/short funds usually trade stock pairs, so the funds most likely won’t even be that short in net terms because a fund goes short one stock and hedges the position long another stock (hence the term “hedge* fund”). The profit (or loss) is from the difference in the stocks’ relative performances.

More obviously, these funds are overall net long the market, if these rapacious plutocrats were betting on disaster, why would they be positioned to profit massively when the broad stock market went up and lose when it went down? Publicly available data, for example, shows that the prominent Brexiteer donor Paul Marshall’s firm has £1.3 billion in short positions on the UK stock market. His firm manages some £30 billion of assets. Which suggests he is in reality geared to profit far more from rising than falling stock markets.

Incidentally, if the fund managers had been short since referendum night they would have lost their fortunes, given the FTSE is up over a 1000 points since the referendum. The whole “Brexit Disaster Capitalism” conspiracy theory does not make sense even if you accept the premise that the Brexit will be a disaster. The hedge fund managers are long the market in the expectation stocks will continue to rise…

*The hedge might also be against derivatives or the relevant market index. To go short without hedge is to be nakedly short. A brave trade.

The second referendum campaign for Tory MPs, Right to Vote, set up by Phillip Lee, no longer contains a single Tory MP among their ranks, following multiple defections, resignations and withdrawals of the whip by the Government. Coincidentally the website and campaign have since folded…

At its height, the group contained 10 Tory MPs in its fold, however, following a record number of MPs changing party, the supposedly Conservative campaign is now led by a Lib Dem and counts four independents, one ‘The Independents’ MP and one ‘The Independent Group for Change’ MP among others. Keeping up?

The only sign the group was ever Tory-affiliated is the two remaining Tory Lords, who will be grateful that Boris said he wouldn’t withdraw the whip from any Lords supporting the Surrender Bill. A good demonstration of the change seen in British politics over the last year.

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